Cicero - Anthony Everitt [152]
Plans for the huge expeditionary force of sixteen legions that Caesar had decided to lead against the Parthian Empire to avenge the defeat and death of Crassus in 53 were approaching completion. He would set off in mid-March 44 and might be away from Rome for as long as three years. He arranged for the advance election of all the Consuls who would hold office during his absence. The Dictator’s lack of interest in domestic politics and the renewal of Republican institutions could hardly have been more clearly demonstrated.
On December 31 one of the Consuls died and, as elections for some other officeholders were being held at the time, Caesar forced the immediate election of a certain Caius Caninius Rebilus, a New Man who had served under him in Gaul, to be his successor for a few hours. This was using the Consulship as a cheap reward for a supporter. Public opinion was outraged. When a crowd of followers prepared to escort the new Consul down to the Forum, Cicero remarked: “We’d better get a move on, or he’ll be out of office before we get there.”
AS the new year dawned the mood in the city was darkening. Many damaging rumors were being assiduously spread—that Caesar was going to establish Egypt as the seat of his Empire where he would rule with his mistress, Queen Cleopatra of Egypt, now living just outside the capital in opulent, un-Roman style; or, even more implausibly, that Troy was to be the new capital of the Empire. These tales were little more than distorted reflections of a perfectly rational anxiety about how Rome would be ruled during Caesar’s absence in Asia Minor.
Caesar may have begun to suspect that among the fawning Senators there were those who recommended more and more fantastic honors with the conscious aim of setting opinion against him. He hesitated over whether or not to assume the title of Dictator for Life, eventually deciding to do so in the early days of February. This caused a good deal of angry comment, since the Dictatorship was traditionally a strictly temporary appointment that gave the officeholder supreme power for a short time, seldom more than six months, in order to cope with a state emergency.
Caesar’s decision was seen as a very bad sign by Republicans, an obvious first step to a formal monarchy. Some of the conspirators, wanting to stir up bad feeling, began saluting him as king in public. They secretly placed a diadem (a ribbon worn around the head, denoting royalty) on one of his statues. Two Tribunes removed it, apparently to Caesar’s annoyance. A little later when he was riding in from attending a festival on the Alban Mount, some men again hailed him as king. “My name is Caesar, not King,” he remarked. The same Tribunes brought a suit against the first man who had shouted the word out. This infuriated Caesar and, when the Tribunes then issued a statement that their freedom of speech was under threat, they were unceremoniously deposed from office. The incident could suggest that Caesar really did want to establish a monarchy. However, there is another more plausible and less sinister interpretation, which an event a few days later seems to confirm.
On February 15, 44, the festival of the Lupercalia was held—a strange ritual which symbolized the renewal of civil order near the year’s beginning. The Luperci were a college of priests, young men of good family who every year on this day ran through the city naked except for goatskin loincloths. They represented wolf-men living in a primal community held together by violence.
Caesar attended this exotic event, watching it from his gilded chair on the Speakers’ Platform in the Forum. The ceremony opened with the sacrifice of goats and a dog, whose blood was smeared on the foreheads of two young men. The blood was then wiped off with milk-soaked wool, after which the Luperci dressed themselves in the bloodstained skins of the victims.